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Q-learning has long been one of the most popular reinforcement learning algorithms, and theoretical analysis of Q-learning has been an active research topic for decades. Although researches on asymptotic convergence analysis of Q-learning…
Stochastic Approximation (SA) is a widely used algorithmic approach in various fields, including optimization and reinforcement learning (RL). Among RL algorithms, Q-learning is particularly popular due to its empirical success. In this…
This paper develops a novel control-theoretic framework to analyze the non-asymptotic convergence of Q-learning. We show that the dynamics of asynchronous Q-learning with a constant step-size can be naturally formulated as a discrete-time…
Q-learning and SARSA are foundational reinforcement learning algorithms whose practical success depends critically on step-size calibration. Step-sizes that are too large can cause numerical instability, while step-sizes that are too small…
Large-scale multi-agent systems are often deployed across wide geographic areas, where agents interact with heterogeneous environments. There is an emerging interest in understanding the role of heterogeneity in the performance of the…
We present the convergence rates of synchronous and asynchronous Q-learning for average-reward Markov decision processes, where the absence of contraction poses a fundamental challenge. Existing non-asymptotic results overcome this…
Q-learning is known as one of the fundamental reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms. Its convergence has been the focus of extensive research over the past several decades. Recently, a new finitetime error bound and analysis for Q-learning…
Motivated by the widespread use of temporal-difference (TD-) and Q-learning algorithms in reinforcement learning, this paper studies a class of biased stochastic approximation (SA) procedures under a mild "ergodic-like" assumption on the…
Motivated by applications in reinforcement learning (RL), we study a nonlinear stochastic approximation (SA) algorithm under Markovian noise, and establish its finite-sample convergence bounds under various stepsizes. Specifically, we show…
Existing studies indicate that momentum ideas in conventional optimization can be used to improve the performance of Q-learning algorithms. However, the finite-sample analysis for momentum-based Q-learning algorithms is only available for…
Stochastic gradient descent is the method of choice for large scale optimization of machine learning objective functions. Yet, its performance is greatly variable and heavily depends on the choice of the stepsizes. This has motivated a…
Motivated by applications in large-scale and multi-agent reinforcement learning, we study the non-asymptotic performance of stochastic approximation (SA) schemes with delayed updates under Markovian sampling. While the effect of delays has…
The objective in this paper is to obtain fast converging reinforcement learning algorithms to approximate solutions to the problem of discounted cost optimal stopping in an irreducible, uniformly ergodic Markov chain, evolving on a compact…
Q-learning with neural network function approximation (neural Q-learning for short) is among the most prevalent deep reinforcement learning algorithms. Despite its empirical success, the non-asymptotic convergence rate of neural Q-learning…
This work proposes a novel strategy for social learning by introducing the critical feature of adaptation. In social learning, several distributed agents update continually their belief about a phenomenon of interest through: i) direct…
We consider a general asynchronous Stochastic Approximation (SA) scheme featuring a weighted infinity-norm contractive operator, and prove a bound on its finite-time convergence rate on a single trajectory. Additionally, we specialize the…
In two-time-scale stochastic approximation (SA), two iterates are updated at varying speeds using different step sizes, with each update influencing the other. Previous studies on linear two-time-scale SA have shown that the convergence…
In this paper, we establish new convergence results for the quantized distributed gradient descent and suggest a novel strategy of choosing the stepsizes for the high-performance of the algorithm. Under the strongly convexity assumption on…
We study the Whittle index learning algorithm for restless multi-armed bandits. We consider index learning algorithm with Q-learning. We first present Q-learning algorithm with exploration policies -- epsilon-greedy, softmax,…
The $Q$-learning algorithm is a simple and widely-used stochastic approximation scheme for reinforcement learning, but the basic protocol can exhibit instability in conjunction with function approximation. Such instability can be observed…